Riley's compelling, intimately shot interviews are often at the heart of the stories he tells and his documentaries have been praised for their impact, through his measured, restrained approach to story telling.

"Hubble's Cosmic Journey" - 25 years after its launch this new doc for the National Geographic Channel unites those who conceived, designed, built and operated the Hubble Space Telescope - the most celebrated science instrument in history. Premiering in April 2015.

"The Girl who talked to Dolphins" - the story of American neuroscientist John Lilly's attempts to build an interspecies communication bridge in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on BBC Four on the 17th June 2014.

"The Fantastic Mr Feynman" - first broadcast in May 2013 on BBC TWO to mark what would have been the Nobel prize winning physicist's 95th birthday.

Voyager: To The Final Frontier - presented by Dallas Campbell - first broadcast on BBC FOUR to mark the 35th anniversary of the Voyager Missions in the autumn of 2012, and shortlisted for a British Science Writer's award in 2013.

Space Shuttle: The Final Mission - made to mark the final flight of NASA's space shuttle, and premiered on BBC TWO just 48 hours after Atlantis landed back on Earth for the last time. The film is presented by Kevin Fong and was last broadcast on BBC FOUR in February 2014.

He is currently visiting professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln's School of Media.

~

Riley gained his doctorate in planetary geomorphology from Imperial College, University of London in 1995, before beginning his broadcasting career; first reporting for the BBC Radio Science unit and later moving to the BBC's Specialist Factual Department as a producer.

Chris was a pioneer of web journalism and streaming video; reporting for the BBC's first online news service which covered the British Association's 1996 Science conference for Tomorrow's World - TW@BA. In 2001 he produced and presented the BBC's first live web cast - covering the African Eclipse from a field in Zambia. He went on to produce and direct one of the first social media video series - Jeffery's Story - which preimered on Bebo in 2006. According to the project Faces of Facebook he was the 407,500,312th person to join Facebook, and in the top 4% of early adopters of Twitter.

He began his TV career as series researcher on the BBC's landmark series The Planets in the late 1990s. Since then he has produced and directed on over one hundred programmes for the BBC.

Chris made his directorial debut on the corporation's flagship science and technology show Tomorrow's World and went on to direct on their long running 'Secret Lives' strand and the first series of the BBC1 prime time show Best Inventions.

In 2002 he produced and directed on BBC2's Science at Christmas mini-series Can't Get Enough before joining Impossible Pictures during 2003-2004, where he produced the BBC's blockbuster space drama-documentary series Space Odyssey - voyage to the planets and directed the accompanying documentary Robot Pioneers, winner of the UK’s prestigious Sir Arthur Clarke Award.

The following year Chris returned to the BBC to produce and direct on the sixth series of Rough Science for BBC TWO, set in the Colorado Rockies.

He conceived the feature documentary 'In the Shadow of the Moon' and collaborated with DOX Productions from 2005 to produce and direct on the film, which went on to win the 2007 Sundance World Cinema Audience award. The film opened in cinemas across the US and Europe during the autumn of that year and received it's TV network premier the following year, when it was nominated for two Grierson awards.

During 2008 his TV work included acting as an executive producer and director of the REMI award winning six part series 'Moon Machines' for Discovery Science Channel, and as a consultant on the major Discovery Channel series, 'When we Left Earth'.

That year he also produced and directed the innovative Bebo hosted teen-drama series Jeffery's Story, and participated in the third Science Foo Camp at the Googleplex, outside San Francisco.

In 2009 - through his studio theatticroom - Chris produced the remastered and restored director's cut of NASA's Apollo 11 documentary Moonwalk One. The film was acquired by the Discovery Channel Europe and had a limited theatrical release in the UK - premiering at the BFI in London and playing the summer festival circuit. Chris introduced the film at the 2009 Glastonbury and Big Chill festivals.

Chris worked as an adjunct curator on the July 2009 British Film Institute programme "One Giant Leap" and his first video installation "Apollo Raw and Uncut" played at the London Science Museum through the anniversary summer. It opened at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Quebec in November 2009 as 'Secrets of Apollo'; part of their exhibition 'Intermission: Films from a Heroic Future', which he also helped to curate. It played for a third time in 2013 at Lincoln's digital culture festival Frequency.

He was the executive producer of 'Dust', a short film which premiered at the 2010 Edinburgh and London Film Festivals and is currently distributed by Shorts International.

Continuing the presentation of overlooked Apollo film archive in public gallery spaces Chris collaborated with the creative science agency super/collider on his 2011 show Cone Crater - a 40th anniversary celebration of Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell's exploration of the Frau Mauro lunar highlands, which played at The Book Club, London as part of the Apollo's End project.

The same year he produced and directed First Orbit; a unique Yuri Gagarin 50th Anniversary film, made in collaboration with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, filming a new view of what Gagarin would have seen on his pioneering orbit of the Earth in 1961.

The resulting doc, filmed on board the International Space Station, premiered on the 12th April 2011 online to the largest global audience for a long form film in YouTube history, and simultaneously on over 1600 screens in more than 130 countries. The film was released on DVD and BluRay in 30 languages the following year.

In front of the camera he has presented on a number of high profile science shows for the BBC starting in 1999, with their total eclipse coverage and the thirtieth anniversary celebrations of Apollo 11 - 'Moon Landings Live'.

The following year he worked briefly on the Sky at Night and co-presented BBC2's monthly astronomy magazine show Final Frontier.

In 2003 he co-presented the BBC/Open University's All Night Star Party live from the Isaac Newton Telescopes on La Palma for BBC2, and the following year he anchored 'Space Odyssey Live' for the BBC with Julia Bradbury.

He has served as a communications consultant to the Geography Department of Kings College London & City University London's School of Engineering, and has a long association with Imperial College's M.Sc. in Science Media Production as both a guest lecturer and external examiner.

He lectured at the The University of Leicester's bi-annual UK Space School between 2000 and 2005 when he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his endeavours in public engagement in astronomy.

As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Moon Shots Chris also wrote a series of essays about Project Apollo for BBC News online.

He is the author of the chapter on Gagarin's visit to London in the 2011 British Council book 'Gagarin in Britain', and is a biographer of physicist Joan Feynman, in the 2013 Ada Lovelace Day book 'A Passion for Science'.

His most recent book for Haynes on the Apollo Lunar Rover - was released in December 2012, to mark the 40th anniversary of it's final drive on the Moon during Apollo 17. To celebrate this anniversary Chris also wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary 'For All Mankind'. His follow up Radio 4 doc "Save the Moon" on the debate about ownership of our neighbouring world, was broadcast in April 2014.

During his career he has skydived from six kilometres high, flown at twice the speed of sound on Concorde, floated weightless for a total of over 30 minutes on board both Russian and European Space Agency parabolic flights, and ridden on two of NASA's astrobiology missions; chasing the Leonid meteor showers around the world for BBC News.

"...an awe-inspiring film about an unbelievable accomplishment..." James Israel,Greencine, Jan 2007

".. this compelling and visually stunning meditation on the historic Apollo space program." New York Times, Jan 2007

"In The Shadow of the Moon" had audiences swooning over its collection of inspiring first-person accounts from astronauts involved in the Apollo space missions. Sarah Keenlyside,Indiewire, April 2007

"...we get to know the men of Apollo pretty well, at least in as much as you can get to know someone who talks to you passionately, and exclusively, about something they care very deeply about." Matt, BlogTo, April 2007

Moon Machines

Apple's Jony Ive, in the New Yorker. (Not quite a review but a nice mention of the award winning series.

"Well researched, carefully crafted and engaging ...great graphics, good interviews and of course, fabulous archive... those who watch will revel in it and remember it."

Broadcast, May 1999

"a glorious series" The Guardian

"One of those exhilarating pieces of television which takes the viewer from the sofa to the far reaches of contemporary science"

James Walton, The Daily Telegraph, May 1999

"Astropysics has never been so beautiful"

The Mail on Sunday, April 1999

"Viewers who haven't been tempted by this series have been missing a treat. Authoritative without being over-familiar, constantly surprising without resorting to sensationalism, it has made space exploration seem fresh and important again."

The Independent, June 1999.

"Fascinating stuff"

The Sun, April 1999

"Ground-breaking"

The Daily Mail, April 1999

"It made me wish I'd been better at Physics"

Matthew Bond, The Daily Telegraph, May 1999

"Science Made Real"

The Express, May 1999

"A model documentary..."

The Times, June 1999

"As ever, the images are spectacular, the verbals workmanlike"

The Times, June 1999

"Awesome"

The Evening Standard, June 1999

"This series puts the gee-whiz back into space for the first time since Apollo... the greatest show off Earth"

Andrew Billen, The New Statesman, May 1999

"Intelligent, mind expanding, packed with interest and visually impressive. It deserves High praise."

Chris is a regular speaker both in the UK and internationally - bringing achievements and breakthroughs in astronomy and space flight alive to audiences using interactive demos, extraordinary video clips and stunning images which he's captured over the years.

Current talks:

Our Exploration Beyond the Earth.

Illustrated with moving and inspiring clips from his multi-award winning documentary films, this is a story of the bigger picture of our miraculous existence in the Cosmos, and a revealing perspective on individual motivation for success.

Relive some of the moments in human history when, as a species, we've transcended our Earthly roots and achieved something of Galactic significance; from the first human steps on another world to the hurling of our spacecraft right out of the Solar System.

Interweaving these extraordinary stories of engineers, who dreamed the impossible and then made it happen, with his own personal experiences of making films about their triumphs, the message of Riley's talk reminds us what matters in life.

The stories of the men and women across America who made Apollo possible. Drawing on his work for TV series such as "Moon Machines" and his 2009 book - "Apollo 11 - an owner's workshop manual", Chris delves into the extraordinary stories of engineering endeavour which turned the dream of flying to the Moon into a reality.

Audience: Adult / young adult Duration: 80 minutes plus questions

Fee: POA

The Spiritual Gift of Apollo

For most of us watching from Earth Apollo was far more than an extraordinary engineering triumph. The vision of human beings standing on another world and the reflections and recollections they returned to Earth with meant more to us than the technical details. Drawing on his interviews with the men who flew to the Moon, Chris reminds us of the spiritual legacy of Apollo.

Audience: Adult / young adult Duration: 60 minutes plus questions

Fee: POA

The Apollo Film Archive

Chris has worked on and off with NASA's substantial film archive since the late 1990s. In this lecture he talks about the history of the archive, its preservation and curation. The talk is illustrated with a selection of film clips which illustrate how he has used the footage in the numerous documentary film's he has been involved in creating from this rich collection.

Audience: Adult / young adult Duration: 90 minutes plus questions

Fee: POA

In the Shadow of the Moon

The making of this multi-award winning film, from the most revealing interviews ever recorded with the Apollo astronauts, to the meticulously uncovered archive film and sound - reunited for the first time in 40 years. This talk reveals the secrets behind a film which is re-engaging America with the greatest story of the 20th Century.

Audience: Adult / young adult Duration: 20-30 minutes plus questions. Designed to accompany a screening of the film.

Fee: POA

Space Odyssey - the making of a movie.

A look behind the scenes at the rigorously researched science which inspired the story lines in this blockbuster BBC series, and how the scenes in space and on the surfaces of our neighbouring planets were created, during grueling filming expeditions across our own planet.

I joined the marvellous Robin Ince at the Bloomsbury Theatre to celebrate what would have been Feynman's 95th birthday to preview some clips from my new biopic of Feynman. Read physicist John Butterworth's account of the day in the Guardian.

10-05-13

The great Philip Sheppard - composer on my film 'The Fantastic Mr Feynman' previews some of his wonderful tracks.

You might have come to this page after seeing a lecture I've given.
The notes below are a bit of a brain dump - and not organised very neatly, and
some of the older links might be broken. But I
hope you can find what you want. If not - then just drop me a line.

-----

“It's a known fact that the film
industry has no shortage of middlemen. The path between filmmaker and audience
is littered with them - some good, some bad. But the promise of a direct
connection to an audience has become the currency of the future.”

In June 2010, Indie Screenings is launching its white label
software which will let any filmmaker anywhere in the world distribute their
film via local screenings, DVD, download and pay-per-view. Viva la revolution.
Sign up to the Indie Screenings mailing list to keep in touch with developments
or contact us at filmmakers@indiescreenings.net

Kickstarter.comhttp://www.kickstarter.com/
- Kickstarter is a new form of commerce and patronage, not a place for
investment or lending. Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by
offering products, benefits and fun experiences.

IndiGogo.com

“If you can get 100,000 followers you've got a career” (Slava Rubin,
founder of Indiegogo.com)

Daily MotionHuluBabelgumSundance
ChannelMetacafeiTunesRevision3MyDamnChannelFramelinePlay4filmLoveFilmAmazon UnboxedSlingboxEyeSodaTribeca Film
Festival ChannelNetFlixFilm 1BbtvPlay Station
and PSPCinema Now

And the Distribution aggregator sites:New VideoGravitas
VenturesDiva ProArts Alliance
MediaShorts
InternationalCrackleZambalan (music
only at the moment)

Filmsbazaar.comhttp://www.filmsbazaar.com/submission_procedure.phpFilmsbazaar.com
shows programmes that are looking for distribution and financing partners,
helping the films and projects to be seen, and known, and fit into a slot, a
line-up, a programming schedule. All requests from the website go directly to
you.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/declaration_of_independence_the_ten_principles_of_hybrid_distribution/ Hybrid
distribution has come into its own with such successes as “Valentino: The Last
Emperor” and “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” both of which hired service deal
companies to handle their theatrical distribution. Working with Abramorama,
ANVIL has grossed over $675,000 in U.S. theaters. Through Truly Indie and
Vitagraph Films, “Valentino” grossed more than $1,755,000 theatrically. In
addition to consulting on “Valentino,” I also consulted on a number of other
films that successfully combined theatrical service deals and semi-theatrical
runs, including “The Singing Revolution” (Abramorama), “Pray the Devil Back to
Hell” (theatrical: Balcony Releasing; semi-theatrical: Film Sprout), “Note by
Note” (Argot Pictures) and “Throw Down Your Heart” (Argot Pictures).

1. GREATER
CONTROL - Filmmakers retain overall control of their distribution,
choosing which rights to give distribution partners and which to retain. If
filmmakers hire a service deal company or a booker to arrange a theatrical run,
they control the marketing campaign, spending, and the timing of their release.
In the OW (Old World), a distributor that acquires all rights has total control
of distribution. Filmmakers usually have little or no influence on key
marketing and distribution decisions.

2. HYBRID DISTRIBUTION - Filmmakers split up their
rights, working with distribution partners in certain sectors and keeping the
right to make direct sales. They can make separate deals for: retail home
video, television, educational, nontheatrical, and VOD, as well as splitting up
their digital rights. They also sell DVDs from their websites and at
screenings, and may make digital downloads available directly from their sites.
In the OW, filmmakers make overall deals, giving one company all their rights
(now known or ever to be dreamed up) for as long as 25 years.

3. CUSTOMIZED STRATEGIES - Filmmakers design creative
distribution strategies customized to their film’s content and target
audiences. They can begin outreach to audiences and potential organizational
partners before or during production. They often ignore traditional windows,
selling DVDs from their websites before they are available in stores, sometimes
during their theatrical release, and even at festivals. Filmmakers are able to
test their strategies step-by-step, and modify them as needed. In the OW,
distribution plans are much more formulaic and rigid.

4. CORE AUDIENCES - Filmmakers target core audiences.
Their priority is to reach them effectively, and then hopefully cross over to a
wider public. They reach core audiences directly both online and offline,
through websites, mailing lists, organizations, and publications. In the OW,
many distributors market to a general audience, which is highly inefficient and
more and more expensive. Notable
exceptions, Fox Searchlight and Bob Berney, have demonstrated
how effective highly targeted marketing can be. “Napoleon Dynamite” first
targeted nerds, “Passion of the Christ” began with evangelicals, and “My Big
Fat Greek Wedding” started with Greek Americans. Building on their original
base, each of these films was then able to significantly expand and diversify
their audiences.

5. REDUCING COSTS - Filmmakers reduce costs by using
the internet and by spending less on traditional print, television, and radio
advertising. While four years ago a five-city theatrical service deal cost
$250,000 - $300,000, today comparable service deals can cost half that or even
less. In the OW, marketing costs have risen dramatically.

6. DIRECT ACCESS TO VIEWERS - Filmmakers use the
internet to reach audiences directly. The makers of the motorcycle-racing
documentary, “Faster,” used the web to quickly
and inexpensively reach motorcycle fans around the world. They pulled off an
inspired stunt at the Cannes Film Festival, which generated international
coverage and widespread awareness among fans. This sparked lucrative DVD sales
first from the website and then in retail stores. In the OW, filmmakers only
have indirect access to audiences through distributors.

7. DIRECT SALES - Filmmakers make much higher margins
on direct sales from their websites and at screenings than they do through
retail sales. They can make as much as $23 profit on a $24.95 website sale
(plus $4.95 for shipping and handling). A retail sale of the same DVD
only nets $2.50 via a typical 20% royalty video deal. If filmmakers sell an
educational copy from their websites to a college or university for $250 (an
average educational price), they can net $240. Direct sales to consumers
provide valuable customer data, which enables filmmakers to make future sales
to these buyers. They can sell other versions of a film, the soundtrack, books,
posters, and t-shirts. In the OW, filmmakers are not permitted to make direct
sales, have no access to customer data, and have no merchandising rights.

8. GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION - Filmmakers are now making
their films available to viewers anywhere in the world. Supplementing their
deals with distributors in other countries, they sell their films to consumers
in unsold territories via DVD or digital download directly from their websites.
For the first time, filmmakers are aggregating audiences across national
boundaries. In the OW, distribution is territory by territory, and most
independent films have little or no foreign distribution.

9. SEPARATE REVENUE STREAMS - Filmmakers limit
cross-collateralization and accounting problems by splitting up their
distribution rights. All revenues from sales on their websites come directly to
them or through the fulfillment company they’ve hired to store and ship DVDs.
By separating the revenues from each distribution partner, filmmakers prevent
expenses from one distribution channel being charged against revenues from
another. This makes accounting simpler and more transparent. In an OW overall
deal, all revenues and all expenses are combined, making monitoring revenues
much more difficult.

10. TRUE FANS - Filmmakers connect with viewers online
and at screenings, establish direct relationships with them, and build core
personal audiences. They ask for their support, making it clear that DVD
purchases from the website will help them break even and make more movies.
Every filmmaker with a website has the chance to turn visitors into
subscribers, subscribers into purchasers, and purchasers into true fans who can
contribute to new productions. In the OW, filmmakers do not have direct access
to viewers.

Social CinemaUsed to be film
societies - using social media now to create an event. Couple of weeks ago -
secret cinema event to show a movie - Alexandra Palace cinema screening of
'Laurence of Arabia' - 20,000 people turned up. The Cineroleum in Clerkenwell -
60 seats - sold out for Badlands screeing in 1 minute!!! Utilising social media
to become your own cinema for your own film!

Open Source MoviesSwarm of angels - Matt Hanson founded project an
open source film studio, onedotzero digital film festival, and ViewShareRemix
open content initiative. A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film
and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global
community of members.It’s not for
everyone - but if you have a more adventurous streak and want to participate in
the future of entertainment then have a look at http://aswarmofangels.com/

2. Star Wreck -
audience - more than 8 million. Budget E15,000 - Finnish sci-fi parody of Star
Trek and Babylon 5 - so popular it lead to a new fully funded project called
Starwreck.com - with a E6.5M budget! Compare with Star Trek UK audience - 3.9
million and Budget $150 milliom

The team behind Star Wreck have now come up with Wreckamovie - a social network of
film talent to help you get your film made in an industry distrupting way.

5.
Starwarsuncut - Casey Pugh and Annelise Pruitt's divvied up Star Wars: IV into
15 second slices of crowd sourced fan versions uploaded to starwarsuncut.com
The result was nominated for an Emmy and the trailer racked up 636,000 views!

6. Born of Hope
- a 2009 fantasy-adventure film based on the appendicies of J.R.R.Tolkein’s
Lord of the rings and made by fans of the Peter Jackson film and released on
dailymotion & youtube.

Self Publishing (books and DVDs)http://www.lulu.comand createspaceAdvantage is for
physical inventory only. However, you can still list and sell your products via
the Make-On-Demand services of Amazon.com affiliates BookSurge (for books) or
CreateSpace (for books, CDs, or DVDs). BookSurge and CreateSpace are
wholly-owned by Amazon.com and offer inventory-free fulfillment to Amazon.com's
customers. Visit www.booksurge.com or www.createspace.com for more
information. self publishing
- http://www.authorhouse.co.uk - author house - builds social networking around
your book. Tom McNab has
just used it for his previous best seller Flanagan's Run - to re-publish
it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sn9w6 - Liz Thompson -
editor of website Book Branch. She says Mick Shatskin's ideological
company predicts "Chunking" - publishing to niche markets.
People out there will buy it and find it. Author house will do PR and
build social networking - but you can get traction for a first time
novel. Celestine Prophecy self published - and caught fire! Apple
have created an ibook store to self publish and waterstones have invited self
publishing authors to approach them. Print on demand makes it
possible to print and re-print it.

The cinematic look was also achieved using a whole load of
portable kit from these guys:http://www.cinevate.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=32Have a look
through their customer featured footage in their "theatre" at the top
for more examples of DSLR camera films.

Nikon just fixed the audio problem with DSLR video by adding a
stereo mic input on their new D300, with full hd video mode included
D-movie it's called. All for just £1499.99.

The Cannon 5D and 7D are still the choice of most pioneers and a
team at Magic Lantern are improving it's performance all the time.
http://vimeo.com/7838475 & http://vimeo.com/7851909

Other examples of DSLR work include:

The short film 'Reverie' by Vincent Laforet - shot on Canon 5D
MkII - http://www.vincentlaforet.com/index_reverie.html and 'First Look' - also
filmed on the Canon 5D MkII and a Red One: http://www.vincentlaforet.com/

Perhaps the most significant consequence of hypervideo will
result from commercial
advertising. Devising a business model to monetize video has proven
notoriously difficult. The application of traditional advertising methods - for
example introducing ads into video - is likely to be rejected by the online
community, while revenue from selling advertising on video sharing sites has so
far not been promising.[20]
Hypervideo offers an alternate way to monetize video, allowing for the
possibility of creating video clips where objects link to advertising or
e-commerce sites, or provide more information about particular products. This
new model of advertising is less intrusive, only displaying advertising
information when the user makes the choice by clicking on an object in a video.
And since it is the user who has requested the product information, this type
of advertising is better targeted and likely to be more effective.
Ultimately as hypervideo content proliferates on the Internet, particularly
content targeted for delivery via the television set, one can imagine an
interlinked web of hypervideo forming in much the same way as the hypertext
based World Wide Web has formed. This hypervideo based "Web of
Televisions" or "TeleWeb" would offer the same browsing and
information mining power of the Web, but be more suited to the viewing
experience of being 10 feet from the screen on the living room couch than the
Web is. Here may form an environment of not only interactive ads, but also one
of interactive and nonlinear news, information, and even story telling.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/first_person_peter_broderick_welcome_to_the_new_world_of_distribution_part1/
Wayne Wang will follow in their footsteps when he premieres
his new feature “The Princess of Nebraska” on YouTubeOctober 17th.

The power of the internet was also demonstrated by the
remarkably successful documentary, “The
Secret.” During the first stage of its release, “The Secret” could be
streamed or purchased at the film’s website, but was not available in theaters,
on television, in stores, or on Amazon. During the next stage, the book was launched
by Simon & Schuster in bookstores and online. After the book shot
to the top of the bestseller list, “The Secret” DVD was finally made available
in retail stores and on Amazon. Over 2 million DVDs were sold during the first
twelve months of its release.

Moving from a web of documents, pages, computers,
discovery and transations to a web of People, places, devices, recommendations
and Experiences. It's time for more social versions of existing business
models. And that includes film production and marketing. http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/sfund -
a new $250million fund to invest in entrepreneurs invetning social applications
and services. A new golden age!

Gamification of Life

to second life and back to real life

Epic Mix – skiers game lift pass
attached to FB profile - With an RF tag built into every lift ticket, the
mountain knows where you ride, the lifts you take and the distance you ski, and
Epic Mix doles out achievements based on your accomplishments.

Legion of Extraordinary Dancers
Distributed by Paramout Digital on Hulu

Places to web swamp

Wikipedia, Citizendium, and Scholarpedia
eHow is an online knowledge resource with
more than 337,000 articles and
videos offering step-by-step instructions on "how to do just about
everything". eHow content is created by both professional experts and
amateur members and covers a wide variety of topics organized into a hierarchy
of categories.
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring
free online
classified advertisements – with sections devoted to jobs,
housing, personals,
for sale, services, community, gigs,
résumés, and discussion forums.
Google Base is an online database provided by Google into which any user
can add almost any type of content, such as text, images, and structured
information in formats like XML, PDF, Excel, RTF, Word Perfect. As of 2009,
it is available to the public as a beta version and the
user interface is available in English and German. If Google finds it relevant
it may appear on its shopping search
engine, Google Maps or
even the web search.

In the digital world, the distance between impulse and action is shorter than
ever before. The goal of most interface design is to make it vanish altogether.
In this open and immediate world millions of people are realising they can be
publishers, that they don't need intermediaries. The British Museum or the Tate
or the Royal Society or Imperial College don't have to wait any longer for the
BBC or Channel 4 to ring and suggest a programme or series; they can make their
own. The same is true of any writer, scientist, politician, photographer or
activist. To call this the "democratisation of communication", or of
information, or of culture seems somehow inadequate.

Governments
are freeing up their data, records and information; museums and galleries
are throwing open their doors; NGOs and charities are becoming publishers;
universities are opening their lecture halls; scientists and corporations are
sharing knowledge in ways which would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago.
And then there is Google, with its ambition to digitise and organise all human
knowledge since time began.

We know that the fastest – almost vertical – growth in amongst all this is what
is rather lumberingly called 'social media'. This involves the power to
generate content and connect with others at low, or no cost; in real time. The
innovation that made all this possible – crudely, developments associated with
Web 2.0 – is now happening alongside the evolution of so-called semantic web,
which wants to find better ways of understanding the meaning of content and how
to find it, organise it and share it.

It was a paper which counted every sale in Rusholme, Didsbury or Cheetham
Hill.
Today, in print, the Guardian is, even now, the ninth or 10th biggest paper in
Britain.
On the web it is, by most measurements, the second best-read English-language
newspaper in the world.

The last line shows the worldwide sales of the Guardian – "foreign
agents" – to be 650 copies. We had more readers in Colwyn Bay than in the
rest of the world.
This clever little widget is effectively our digital circulation map today. It
shows you in real time a sample of the people reading the Guardian from just
one of its 32 servers.
Nor is all this being bought by tricks or by setting chain-gangs of reporters
early in the morning to re-write stories about Lady GaGa or Katie Price. In
that same period last year, our biggest growth areas were environment (up
137%), technology (up 125%) and art and design (up 84%). Science was up 81%;
politics 39% and Comment is Free 38%.
- There was the widget we
built to allow 23,000 Guardian readers to help us sort through hundreds of
thousands of documents relating to MPs expenses. The Telegraph's original
investigation was brilliantly executed. But the future will also be about
asking for help in digesting vast and complex amounts of data.
This animated map of what the Twitterati were discussing, or searching for,
showed how – within 12 hours of my tweeting a suitably gnomic post saying we
had been gagged – Trafigura became the most popular subject on Twitter in
Europe.
Some tweeters beavered away trying to find out what it was they were banned
from knowing. One erudite tweeter uncovered something called the 1840
Parliamentary Papers Act, which no media lawyers seem to know about. Others
pointed to where a suppressed document was available. Others found and
published the parliamentary question we were warned not to report.
Within hours Trafigura had thrown in the towel on the injunction and dropped
any pretence that they could enforce a ban on parliamentary reporting. The mass
collaboration of strangers had achieved something it would have taken huge
amounts of time and money to achieve through conventional journalism or law.

Google Zeitgeist lectures on youtube
TED Global (second one ever) in Oxford next month..
Lots of new generators/outlets for video content...
Eg wellcome trust
Royal Opera House - behind the scenes tours and talks, Tate Modern's online top
trumps which features behind the scenes info.
Learning online - lectures posted for free by eveyone from Cambridge Uni to
Harvard, Art talks from Met Museum of Art, Bobotics from MIT, language courses
from Brit Council, OU served 20million downloaded tracks on iTunes U, Apple
says 250mill lecturs have now been downloaded from these sites.

Transmedia
From:
http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/08/features/what-is-transmedia
This is transmedia storytelling. Large studios and broadcasters, as well as
independent filmmakers such as Weiler, are building fictional worlds that smash
through their frames on to multiple platforms. Unlike quick promotional
spin-offs, this new type of tie-in extends, rather than adapts, storylines. It
tells various parts of the story using distinct media, exploiting the qualities
unique to each platform. So when you watch a TV show, you might follow a
sub-plot that spills on to the web, then read
the dénouement in a graphic novel. Yes, writers have long created worlds
that go beyond the page -- L Frank Baum did as much with his 1900 novel, The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, whose story world he expanded into a musical and other
books. But today’s transmedia producers are planning for multiple platforms
from the start. They design fictional universes that are consistent however the
audience engages.

Although Blair Witch was transmedia-shaped, nobody was using the term. That
came in late autumn 2002, when Henry Jenkins, a media professor at MIT, went to
an Electronic Arts workshop held for Hollywood producers and game designers in
Los Angeles. “There was enormous excitement there about the prospect of deeper
collaboration,” says the 52-year-old, whose work on convergence culture became
a touchstone for transmedia theory. “They were groping towards a reimagining of
what entertainment could do in an
era of networked communications, but lacked a conceptual vocabulary.

Meanwhile, in New York, Lance Weiler was planning Head Trauma. He didn’t have
much cash to burn (the film cost $126,000), but wanted an equally engaging
experience. Weiler’s answer? A
pervasive game. “I started to experiment with it not being a film in
traditional form -- how could I put people into the shoes of the protagonist?
How could the story move from one experience to another in ways that created
some degree of social interaction?”
In its limited US cinema release, Head Trauma consistently sold out. So Weiler
planned his next project, a post-apocalyptic mystery called HiM (short for Hope
is Missing), as transmedia from the outset. It launched in 2007 as a blog set
up by a man to find his missing fiancée, Hope Wilcott; the quest became an
alternate reality game. It proved popular: the blog attracted 2.5 million
views. Weiler is now working on an augmented-reality app for Android phones
which continues the story. And this autumn he’ll shoot the HiM feature film
with Ted Hope, producer of 21 Grams.

Transmedia has blurred the divisions within organisations: Locke says that he
stopped making those distinctions long ago (he insists that his commissioning
team is “platform agnostic”). And at the BBC, for example, multiplatform
producers are embedded with the traditional production teams of each show;
television writers work alongside games developers. Even the distinction
between platforms may disappear as audiences increasingly engage with separate
platforms simultaneously. The market-research firm Nielsen estimates that in
December 2009, US viewers spent an average of three hours and 30 minutes
watching TV while also using the internet. That’s nearly an hour longer than a
year earlier. As new technology such as tablet
devices built for sofa surfing and web-enabled TV become ubiquitous,
they will make consuming transmedia content more natural.

The Media Mash uP
Channel 5 and Facebook 17th aug 2010
Channel 5 is to become the first UK terrestrial broadcaster to bring its video
on-demand content to social networking website Facebook. The broadcaster, which
today announced a major shakeup of its operation, reportedly plans to embed its
Demand Five service on Facebook, allowing the site's 26 million UK users to
watch on-demand programmes such as The Gadget Show, Neighbours and Home and
Away.

Quotes
Where ideas are born - from the coffee houses of Europe which helped inspire
the Enlightenment - such gathering places allowed the ideas to be shared and
serendipitously improved upon. Because chance favours the connected
world. Technology has liberated ideas beyond the human mind.

Keep up - www.workbookproject.com

http://powertothepixel.com/videos-london-2008
Power to the Pixel is a company dedicated to supporting film and the wider media
in its transition to a digital age with a passion for connecting creative
talent to audiences. All its cross-media services are dedicated to a core idea
that success is driven by knowledge – most critically of how to work in a
rapidly-evolving, customer-driven international market.

web links

web links

Multi-disciplinary Science

"The more science advances, the less, it seems, that any one discipline holds all the answers.....we have entered the post-disciplinary age where a new breed of multi-diciplinary institutes is emerging" www.seedmagazine.com

http://www.iftf.org/ - The Institute for the Future - a group of people identifying emerging trends in everything from health care to human identity.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/MINDInstitute/ - The MIND Institute - providing an multidiscipinary approach to neuroscience. "Standing shoulder to shoulder, families, scientists, physicians, educators, and administrators are working together to unlock the mysteries of the mind."

http://www.google.org - aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease.

http://cba.mit.edu/ - MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms - devoted to study of boundary between the content of information and its physical representation.

http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ - The future of humanity institute, University of Oxford. Their mission is to bring excellent scholarship to bear on big picture questions for humanity; global catastrophies, rational and wise decision making, enhancing cognition and lifespan...etc..

http://www.earth.columbia.edu - The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Focused on achieving environmental sustainability in the context of rapid population growth, climate change and extreme poverty and infectious disease.

Applied research Centre in Human Security, University of Coventry. Human security is a new security framework that centres directly on people and recognises that lasting peace and social justice cannot be achieved unless people are protected from threats to basic needs and rights. We work across professional, sectoral and intellectual boundaries in search of integrated solutions to local and global problems. Part of the University's Futures Institute.

The J.Craig Vener Institute - Harnessing the collective brains of physicists, biologists, chemists and computer scientists the institute builds on the original Human Genome Sequencing work of Craig Venter, and has recently published the first diploid human genome. Through their Sorcerer II projecta global ocean sampling expedition they uncovered more than six million new genes (doubling the number already known to science) and thousands of new protein families from organisms found in sea water. Listen to Craig Venter's take on post-disciplinary research here.

Discover the Google backed Singularity University - http://singularityu.org/ - their mission to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges.

Multi-disciplinary Gatherings

SciBar Camp - a gathering of scientists, artists, and technologists for a weekend of talks and discussions.

Sci Foo - a series of interdisciplinary scientific unconference focused on emerging technology and is designed to encourage collaboration between scientists and other thinkers who would not necessarily work together.

eg - a series of conferences that draw together the best creative forces in our society. "A conference for the most influential and creative minds in the world"

the do lectures getting a handful of speakers together in the hope that they may inspire you to do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about.

2gether - promoting social progress and enhancing public life and collective well being through digital innovations like the internet, mobile and game technologies.

Important public science appreciation and promotion of rational thought.

The atheist bus campaign - Bus advertising with the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." This is an endeavour of the British Humanist Association - which represents the interests of the large and growing population of ethically concerned but non-religious people in the UK. Their vision is a world without religious privilege or discrimination, where people are free to live good lives on the basis of reason, experience and shared human values.

Less Wrong - a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality - the art of obtaining beliefs that correspond to reality as closely as possible. Explore their definition of rationality further here.

http://www.usfirst.org/ - For Inspiration & Recognition of Science and Technology. An organisation devoted to "transforming our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes."

Understanding Uncertainty - the work of David Spiegelhalter's team at the University of Cambridge's programme exploring public understanding of risk.

http://www.natcenscied.org/ The National Center for Science Education defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. Watch their Expelled Exposed films.

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/ Sense about Science - responds to the misrepresentation of science and scientific evidence on issues that matter to society, from scares about plastic bottles, fluoride and the MMR vaccine to controversies about genetic modification, stem cell research and radiation. Chair of the board is Lord Dick Taverne whose brilliant book The March of Unreasonshould be on everyone's reading list.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory - A mission to place a satellite at Earth's Lagrangian point L1 to provide a continuous view of the entire planet and make that live image available via the internet. Originally conceved by Al Gore, it was hoped that the satellite would not only advance science (measuring how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from the whole Earth) but also raise awareness of the Earth itself, updating the influential Blue marble picture taken by Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt in December 1972. The satellite is built, paid for and ready to fly. Nations have offered to launch it for free. But it's in a box outside Washington DC, a victim of politics.

The Skeptic - the UK's only regular magazine that takes a skeptical look at pseudoscience and claims of the paranormal. And Skeptics in the Pub - an important monthly meeting in a London pub.

The value of curiosity is hard to calculate. Is the the search for fundamental knowledge as useful as the search for solutions to specific problems? Read Christopher Llewellyn-Smith's take on the need for pure science here.

The Smart studio creates new fusions of art, technology and science. The research is carried out from an artistic perspective focusing at innovative applications of technology. The work takes the form of interdisciplinary projects with results that both present and generate new reflections and questions. Brain Ball comes out of the Smart studio.

Professor Arthur I. Miller, asks what does it mean to be creative? Is there anything that links the thought processes of the world's greatest artists - like Picasso - and the world's greatest scientists - like Einstein? And if so, what is it? This has been the subject of his research for several decades.

Robin Wight, President of Engine and WCRS - and one of the world's big thinkers and founder of the Ideas Foundation. "Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will." Listen to his recent BBC Radio 4 series here.

Envision - an organisation founded in 2000 by four young people aimed at challenging the general perception that young people are apathetic and disengaged. Envision's simple model supports young people to develop the skills, awareness, confidence and motivation necessary to lie at the heart of positive change.

TEDTalks - devoted to giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world's greatest thinkers and teachers. The most inspiring TV you will never watch on TV!

We think. Charle Leadbeather's take on the web. "The audience is taking to the stage. Inbformation is everywhere... which is pretty confusing.... But ideas take life when they are shared..be really creative.. cos new ideas come through conversations....You are worth what you share not what you own."

We feel fine Jonathan Harris' beautiful and touching exploration of human emotion through global blogging. Watch his TED talk on it here And visit Jonathan's other amazing projects like the Sputnik Observatory - an observatory for the study of contemporary culture - at number27.org.

Google's Ngram Viewer - type in any word or words to seea graph showing how frequently the word(s) have been used over the past two centuries in books. It works by drawing on the vast archive of scanned books - over 15 million at the last count. Read more about it here and some of the research that's already being done with it. If you like Ngram then check out David McCandless' visualizations of other data at Informationisbeautiful. His visualisations are beautiful and intriguing.

People to People - exists to enhance international understanding and friendship through educational, cultural and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences directly among peoples of different countries and diverse cultures. Their moto is 'Peace through understanding'.

Show us a better Way. "Tell us what you'd build with public information and we could help you fund your idea."

Network for Social Change - a unique group of philanthropists committed to a wide range of social change, from arts and education to economic justice, environmental sustainability, human rights and work towards preserving world peace.

School of Everything - connects people who want to learn with passionate teachers in their local area.

gov2.0 - the rise of the World Wide Web has resulted in remarkable new possibilities and business models reshaping our culture and our economy. Now the time has come to reshape government.

Smart Justice - unlocking solutions for crime. SmartJustice is a unique resource that provides comprehensive information on initiatives that are effective in changing offenders' behaviour, stopping crime before it starts and tackling the causes of crime for adults and young people. It is based at the Prison Reform Trust in London. SmartJustice for Young People's work is being continued through a five year campaign to reduce child and youth imprisonment called'Out of Trouble'

Friction.tv - an online platform for user generated news and opinion. We exist to give you the opportunity to air your views and respond to the opinions of others. You can debate issues of local interest to you or discuss points of global importance. Either way, Friction.tv will provide an interesting and stimulating alternative to the sanitised, agenda driven mediocrity of the conventional mass media.

4ip - Channel 4's hunt for rule-breaking, re-invention of public service media in a post-broadcast world. Watch Jon Gisby explain it here and read Ewan McIntosh's blog on the sorts of things they'd like to do here. As Their holy grail is to create the participation of good web sites with the wit and intelligence of their most distinctive and best programmes, eg Rock Corps, Carrot Mob, or TED.

Search for Common Ground Founded in 1982, to transform the way the world deals with conflict - away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. SFCG work with local partners to find culturally appropriate means to strengthen societies' capacity to deal with conflicts constructively: to understand the differences and act on the commonalities.

Peacedirect - It makes sense to act before a conflict leads to a full blown humanitarian crisis, and to do that we need to listen to the local people who are there on the ground and can see the warning signs. Our vision is a world where the work and knowledge of local peacebuilders is central to all strategies for managing conflict.

The Quilliam Foundation - the world’s first counter-extremism think tank set up to address the unique challenges of citizenship, identity, and belonging in a globalised world. Quilliam stands for religious freedom, human rights, democracy and developing a Muslim identity at home in, and with, the West.

Remember the world as it was at the birth of Google - and their novel backrub technology.

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project which is devoted to collaborative learning. They build learning resources from the ground up offering tutorials and courses for the fostering of learning.

The KnowledgeWeb Project is a learning web site envisioned by James Burke to present knowledge in a highly interconnected, hollistic way.The goal is not only to inform about the scientists, artists, innovators and explorers of history but also to find the connections between them and impact they have had on modern life.

http://www.mymicrocredit.org - Karl Rabeder's project to give away money in the shape of micro-loans of Euros200 to help people in developing countries to create their own work and transform their lives and their fortunes.

Ataraxia - The Epicurean state of true happiness which stems from rejection of an afterlife, not fearing the gods because they are distant and not concerned with us, avoiding politics and vexatious people, surrounding oneself with trustworthy and affecionate friends. Being comfortable with uncertainty is something we should all learn to livnd desire to find truths. read more about this struggle here. Perhaps it's the simple pleasures that are at the heart of happiness and contentment.

The best advice you'll ever get on how to live your life from the "Mark and Angel Hack Life" blog-practical tips for productive living.

John Diamond on reasons to be cheerful."We have a limited capacity for happiness, but an almost infinitely unlimited capacity for, well, not unhappiness exactly, but non-happiness."

Objectivism - derives from the principle that human knowledge and values are objective they are not created by the thoughts one has, but are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by man's mind. Ayn Rand characterized Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on earth", grounded in reality, and aimed at defining man's nature and the nature of the world in which he lives. She considered reasonto be the only means of acquiring knowledge and the most important aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am notprimarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

"One key ingredient to happiness is social relationships, and another key ingredient is to have important goals that derive from one's values [and talents], and to make progress toward those goals."

The Grant Research Project - a life long study of happiness started in the 1940s, and still running. Professor George Vaillant has devoted his life to this study of over 280 men from the Harvard area which has sort to explore every aspect of their lives from relationships with friends and family to their joys and sorrows. Read more about it at The Atlantic. Valiant's studies of the data suggest that in broad terms happiness is about pulling positive emotions into the front of your mind rather than dwelling on the negative side to life. Cultivating a feeling of worth through altruistic acts and loving relationships with friends and family is at the route of happiness in all the lives studied. Such an approach universally seems to have nurture a feeling in the subjects of gladness in a life well lived. The job of life is not one of "keeping up with the Jones'" but of playing and loving. As Valiant says "happiness is love. Full stop."

For more thoughts on adjusting to the world throughout your lifespan see Vaillant's booksAdaptation to Life and Aging Well - based on the data gathered from the Grant Research Project.

Examination of these life long studies into satisfaction and contentment with life all point to one single issue regarding an end to life and the anxiety induced by the reality of eventual death and the temporary nature of personal existence. For those of us who chose to ponder this fact, it can be a highly negative influence on our happiness, which we can chose to tackle in one of two ways; either to ignore it or to embrace sone of the comforts of conventional religious faiths, which provide the strength or dellusion to deal with.

So is there a contentment with life to be attained without organised religion? Such a path is explored in Vaillant's 2008 book Spiritual Evolution. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief.

All faiths and none a group of people with different worldviews, religious and non-religious who are exploring some of the big questions in life from our personal viewpoints. This website provides resources to enable learners and staff to develop an understanding of the worldviews. Here you can find short essays on a range of topics from death to sex and freedom to violence

The British Humanist Association - "science expresses the greatest human values: our care for each other and our wish to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves", Raymond Tallis, Philosopher, novelist and gerontologist.

The Ethical Society - Founded in 1793, is the oldest freethought community in the world. The Society is a progressive movement whose aims are the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in all relevant fields..

David Eagleman's book Sum. David is a neuroscientist whose book explores the vastness of our ignorance when it comes to the afterlife. David believes that we don't have enough data to be 100% sure about the atheistic view of the world, and that any faith you have is likley to be more to do with how you were brought up than any special truth. He concludes that the answer to what happens after death is probably something else - a state he has coined the term 'possibillian' to describe. Check out the BBC's coverage of his ideas.

Cecil Hepworth - the original British Film Maker. I always find it incredible that his 1903 hit film 'Alice in Wonderland' (dubbed 'the Avatar of its day') was melted down to retrieve the silver when his company went under in the 1920s. The nitrate copy which the BFI holds lacks some scenes - but was restored in 2009 for re-release with Tim Burton's 2010 adaptation of the story.

Write Charlie's Name - Charlie Thompson was only thirteen years old when she died in a terrible train accident in December 2005. This web site encourages us to write Charlie's name anywhere in the world to keep her memory alive and to help her spirit travel the world in support of the Khandel Light charity.

My Daddy Cooks - adventures in the kitchen with two year old Archie and his dad.